


Madame Mallory

by unknowableroom_archivist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Parody
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-08-23
Updated: 2007-08-23
Packaged: 2019-01-19 06:55:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12405306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unknowableroom_archivist/pseuds/unknowableroom_archivist
Summary: One night Laura is walking. And then she's in Hogsmeade. And she's not very happy about it.





	Madame Mallory

**Author's Note:**

> Note from ChristyCorr, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Unknowable Room](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Unknowable_Room), a Harry Potter archive active from 2005-2016. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project after May 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Unknowable Room collection profile](http://www.archiveofourown.org/collections/unknowableroom).

ON WHOM LAURA MALLORY IS: Laura Mallory is a woman in Georgia who hates Harry Potter. I mean, _hates_. She’s trying to get the books banned in the school libraries all across the state because they are bringing fans to the occult and corrupting their minds (personally, I don’t feel too corrupted, but that’s me). She’s gone to school boards several times and has failed miserably every time, but she says she is intending to keep fighting to ban the books. This fight has given her the title of ‘Idiot of the Year’ by the Washington Post for 2006.

The vaguely ironic thing about this? She hasn’t even read the books.

**Madame Mallory**

Laura woke up.

  
She wasn't quite sure where she was. It was cold; there was a gentle wind blowing through the grassy field, quite unlike the breeze that was typical in Georgia, especially at this time of year. Come to think of it, this grass wasn't typical of Georgia

  
Come to think of it, she had no idea where she was.

  
She down neatly, trying to think. It had been evening, hadn't it? Well, it was evening here too. She had been walking her dog, enjoying the fresh air, and there had suddenly been a loud noise and lights, and now this, whatever this was. Wherever this was.

  
She looked around. It was cloudy, even though it was summertime and it should be humid and hot and sticky, but it seemed slightly more winter-y here. There was a village a short walk away; they would know where this place is. She began to proceed down to the village, hoping and praying that she wasn't like all those crazies she had been forced to study and read about at school. She had heard of those people with strange diseases, claiming that they woke up one day and had no idea where they were, or people who claimed to have multiple personalities in their brains. It was clearly fiction, a way to excuse their misbehavior, so they could have a clean conscience when they approached God one day. Laura laughed to herself. They, along with the Wiccans and atheists and gays and all of those other confused, terrible people, would one day have their comeuppance.

  
The village was unlike anything Laura had ever seen. The buildings all seemed rickety, and the cobblestone streets seemed unsafe for any sort of motorized vehicle to drive down. She passed a place that had a severed pigs head on a sign and wrinkled her nose at the smell of goats that seemed to be looming around it and proceeded to walk down the street, beginning to feel nervous. This place seemed awful. Probably the home of drunkards and hippies and their diseased children. Passing a post office that looked unlike any sort of post office Laura had ever seen, with lots of animatronics that looked like owls peering through the windows, Laura turned the corner and saw a pretty, young woman- most likely some type of harlot, Laura thought wryly- letting a cat out of her building.

  
"Excuse me, but I was wondering where exactly this place is?" Laura asked the young woman politely. She looked up.

  
"What do you mean? It's Hogsmeade, of course!" She said, in an accent that Laura couldn't place. It sounded vaguely English, but there was something else in it that didn't make it seem like the proper English accent that one could hear on PBS whenever they showed _Pride and Prejudice_ or one of the other many classics by the BBC.

  
"Where's Hogsmeade?" Laura asked.

  
"What? Did you Apparate wrong? Don't you have your license, you look old enough to know how.... more then old enough...and what in the name of Merlin are you wearing?"

  
"What do you mean?" Laura cried, feeling a little prickle at the name of ‘Merlin’. She hadn’t found a decent case against _The Once and Future King_ and _Le Morte D’Arthur_ , but it was on her to-do list. "I'm wearing normal clothes, a blouse and pants, what is so funny about that?"

  
"Pants?" She said. "What do pants have to do with anything?"

  
"Well, nothing, but you asked," Laura retorted, looking at the woman's outfit. Initially Laura had assumed it was a dress, but looking at it closer, it didn't seem to fit like a dress, but far looser up the top.

  
The woman looked a little more kindly. "Were you under the Imperius Curse? Did the Death Eaters get you?"

  
"Well, I'm most certainly not cursed," Laura scoffed. "Don't tell me you believe in witchcraft...must have read bad literature as a child..."

  
"You can't be a Muggle," She said, more to herself then to Laura, "There are repelling charms all over this place, you must have been Obliviated. I best fetch Dumbledore. Why don't you come in and have a cup of tea?"

  
"All right," Laura said. "Do you have peppermint?"

  
"Peppermint toads? I'm not Honeydukes, don't be ridiculous," She said, opening the door. 

  
"Call me Rosmerta, and hurry in, before the cat pops out... hello, Mopsy," She said to an old woman over the road that opened the door and let out several dogs. "Poor Mopsy has too many dogs then she knows what to do with, really, hope they don't scare the cat."

  
"B-but, what sort of tea are you going to serve me? Darjeeling?"

  
"Darjeeling? What's that?"

  
"Tea!"

  
"Never heard of it," Rosmerta said. “I buy Teabing’s Terrific Tea Leaves, imported from the finest Wizarding markets in India.”

  
"So what sort of tea do you serve?"

  
"What sort of question is that? Tea tea! Normal tea! Whoever did that charm did an excellent job if you don't remember what tea is... unless you would prefer mead? Or Butterbeer?"

  
"Who'd add butter into beer? And in any case, I most certainly don't want any alcohol, this is confusing enough," Laura retorted.

  
"Of course, dear," Rosmerta said as Laura looked down and ran her fingers through her hair. "Sugar? Milk?"

  
"J-just milk, please," Laura said, looking at the clean table. She was beginning to get a headache. "Do you have any Advil?"

  
"Any what?"

  
"Advil? Or Tylenol?"

  
"What are they?" Rosmerta asked as the teacup and saucer appeared next to Laura on the table. Laura took a large sip of the tea. It was some sort of black tea, but, Laura realized as she took another sip, undeniably the best black tea she had ever tasted.

  
"I've sent for Dumbledore, he'll know what to do," Rosmerta said a minute later. "He'll probably come over the fire, I hope it is warm enough, I was planning on just letting it die..."

  
They were both silent for a minute, Laura drinking her, tea and suddenly she jumped up and gasped as the flames turned green and a very old, very strange looking man walked out of the fire.

  
"Yes, Rosmerta?" He asked.

  
"Thank goodness, Albus.... I found her walking down the lane, she seems to have no idea what's happened to her, doesn't remember a thing, I think someone put a memory charm on her..."

  
"I don't recognize her," The man named Albus said. "What house were you in?"

  
"House?" Laura asked blankly. "What house? It's 1452 Fenchurch Lane..."

  
"Indeed," Albus said with Rosmerta, nodding. "Come with me, I'll take you to school. Did the Death Eaters get you?"

  
"The what?"

  
Albus took a handful of powder out of his cloak, muttered something  
incomprehensible, and pushed Laura and himself into the flames. Laura tried to scream as the harlot Rosmerta's face disappeared. Albus and Laura seems to be banging in the heat, ash going up her nose... and suddenly Laura fell out of the fireplace, in an entirely different room, where three young teenagers were all sitting in comfortable-looking chintz armchairs.

  
"Sir?" One of the boys said, one with dark hair and glasses. There was another one with vivid red hair who was dressed very shabbily, and a girl with long, bushy brown hair.

  
"Just a small delay, I'm afraid, Harry," Albus said as Laura got up. She looked at the teenagers. They were all in long, black robes, a contrast to Albus' bright purple ones.  
"I think the Death Eaters may have got her. What did you say your name was?"

  
"Laura," She said softly. "Laura M-Mallory. What on earth are you all wearing? It's nowhere near Halloween."

  
"You're right, but was has Halloween got to do with it?" The red haired boy asked, seeming amused.

  
"But shouldn't you be wearing j-jeans and sweatshirts and..."

  
"What's wrong with you?" The redhead asked again. "I hate that Muggle clothing, you can't do anything in it..."

  
"Are you a pure-blood?" Albus asked quietly.

  
"A pure-blood what?"

  
"Witch."

  
"I am NOT a witch!" Laura cried out. "I am no- no _heathen_ , banished to eternal misery in hell..."

  
"Then how are you here?" Harry asked. "Did you Apparate?"

  
"You-can-not-Apparate-in-or-out-of-Hogwarts," The girl said very quickly and slightly angrily. She turned her gaze to Laura. "We don't wear Muggle clothes here. People in movies seem to think witches and wizards do, but we wouldn't. We don't."

  
"Thank you, Miss Granger," Albus said. "Madame Mallory, may you please think of exactly what happened prior to arriving outside of Hogsmeade?"

  
"What?"

  
"Please."

  
Laura tried to think of it: think of the warm air, the seat on her back, the smell of her dog playfully walking along...

  
Albus took a stick and placed it on Laura's temple and pulled it out, and as he did the memory seemed to disappear and a long, sticky strand came out of her head. He then walked over to a cupboard, opened it, and waved the stick several times over whatever was inside. He then took out a bowl and brought it over to the desk in the centre of the room. Harry made a movement over to it and then froze. Albus, looking at him, nodded. "Yes, you three can come along too."

  
The four of them peered around the bowl expectantly, and Albus looked over and said, "You may want to come over here too, Madame Mallory, for this does, after all, concern you."

  
Laura went over and looked around the bowl, and suddenly the five of them were plunged into the liquid, and falling onto the pavement. Laura stiffly got up and looked around.

  
It was her neighborhood of all places. "Thank goodness," Laura muttered, getting up off the middle of the road. "What an awful dream." She then hissed as she saw Albus, Harry, Miss Granger, and the read head boy, who didn't look very happy about something.

  
"Are you alright, Ron?" Miss Granger asked as he winced. He suddenly stood up much straighter and the look was gone.

  
"I'm fine," Ron retorted, but as soon as she looked away he started wincing and hobbling again.

  
Laura looked around suddenly and gave a small scream, for there was her, walking her dog, like she had just before. She could ever hear her whistling what she had been just before she had woken up in the field.

  
"Oh, do you like Tchaikovsky too?" Albus asked her pleasantly.

  
"Tchai-what-y? Hermione?" Laura heard Ron hiss.

  
"Muggle composer from Russia," Miss Granger hissed back.

  
"Well, he's not my favorite, but I do enjoy chamber music," Albus said, and he hummed along with the old-Laura. Real-Laura, however, continued walking with Albus, Ron, Hermione and Harry, who were following her.

  
She was just crossing the street when, out what seemed to be nowhere, a car sped on the wrong side of the road and turned the corner. Laura cried out, and suddenly the five of them were back in the office, looking over the bowl. Laura found herself gasping great big gulps of air, her heart racing.... she had been hit by a car...but she was alive, wasn't she? She was dreaming, dreaming, that was all.

  
"Oh, dear," Albus said, looking at Laura with some type of pity. "Oh dear, dear, dear."

  
What?" Ron asked. "Professor Dumbledore?"

  
"I want to leave!" Laura cried, taking several steps back, away from the four other people. "I want to go, let me out... I no longer want to be surrounded by this, this insane nonsense...clearly, you four are proof of what I've always said, you must of read those- those books, those terrible Harry Potter books, and gone to the occult, just like I said... I hated witches and wizards for this exact reason..."

  
"Harry Potter books?" Harry asked blankly. "What? I'm not in any books."

  
The girl rolled her eyes. "Yes you are, Harry, you're in _Notable Magical Events of the 20th Century_ , _Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts_... Oh!" She cried, and she took looked at Laura with pity.

  
"You hate witches and wizards?" Ron asked, looking angry.

  
"Yes, I've campaigned against them and those books for years!"

  
"I'm afraid, Madame Mallory, that you are dead," Albus said sympathetically.

  
"I am not dead!" Laura cried. "I would be in heaven if I was dead, heaven, and heaven would not have witches and Harry Potter!" Ron pinched her.

  
"Did that hurt?" Ron asked. "You're not dreaming.”

  
"You're dead, madam," Hermione said softly.

  
"Yes," Albus said softly.

  
"And believe me," Harry added, "This is not heaven."

  
"You are dead, Madame Mallory," Albus said, giving the smallest of smiles. "And if what you hated most of all was witches and wizard and the world of Harry Potter... then I am afraid it is my unfortunate duty, Laura Mallory, to welcome you to your hell."


End file.
